Immortal Flowers – Rikka Shinji Ohmaki

IJlst

Like the natural world, culture is something that takes shape layer by layer over time. Both rest atop a vast substrate that, rather than disappearing, is built and expanded upon by each new generation in turn. Which is exactly how the city of IJlst came to be. The stinzenplanten, planted long ago and now largely running wild, are a glimpse of that invisible lower layer and the role of human activity in its development. The fountain, properly titled ‘Immortal Flowers: Rikka’, connects an element from Frisian nature and culture – the blooming stinzenplanten – with an ancient form of Japanese flower-arranging, Ikebana. It symbolises the eternal connection between humans, culture and the natural world.

‘Speak, memory’ could be Shinji Ohmaki’s (Japan, b. 1971) motto. All his sculptures, videos and installations stem from his research into what once was, but has disappeared from our memory. Old crafts, lost traditions, vanished species of flowers: for him they are not gone – just buried under the dust of time. He believes it is his role as an artist to bring them back to life in beauty.